When James wrote, "Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you" (James 4:8), he must have been speaking from his own experience. Had he discovered that as his understanding of Christ Jesus' teachings regarding God deepened he felt the tender Shepherd of Israel nearer and nearer to him?
The human heart has always hungered to find God. Yet Jesus' teachings on this subject were simple. (John 17:20, 21, 23): "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.... I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one."
In Christian Science this holy desire of the Master's is literally fulfilled in the degree that the student discovers for himself the basic facts of Christianity: God as perfect cause, man as perfect effect, and the spiritual universe as infinitely and eternally good, like its author, the divine Mind. As Mary Baker Eddy writes (Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 9), "The unity of God and man is not the dream of a heated brain; it is the spirit of the healing Christ, that dwelt forever in the bosom of the Father, and should abide forever in man." To convey as best human language can this divine unity of God and man, Mrs. Eddy uses many illustrations, such as the sun's reflection in a dewdrop, the ray of light from the sun, an image in a mirror, and a drop of water within the ocean.
